April 29, 2011

Jim Manzi in National Review and Megan McArdle in the Atlantic were struck by my nostalgic quote yesterday from Paul Krugman about his idyllic upbringing in a (pre-integration, pre-immigration, all-white) middle-class suburb.

Manzi writes:

My motivation in writing about political economy is, in some ways, much like Krugman’s. But rather than seeing that moment as primarily the product of policies like unionization, entitlements and high taxes, as is Krugman’s view, I believe that it was primarily the product of circumstance. We had just won a global war, and had limited competition; we had a huge wave of immigration, followed by a multi-decade pause; oil was incredibly cheap; a backlog of technical developments had yet to be exploited and scaled up, and so forth. We can’t go back there, at least not exactly.

Which of the above is not like the others because it's an extremely explicit public policy choice?

Right, immigration policy! Three points for Gryffindor!

McArdle writes:

Their existence, in the way that Manzi and Krugman remember, was also completely dependent on other forms of inequality: of the ability to move away from social problems, which is harder now; of generations of women whose sole destiny was the kitchen. This produced a world in which most homes were, from the point of view of kids, basically the same: all of them contained a mom who spent most of her time cleaning the place or feeding its occupants, and the size and contents were naturally limited to the amount of stuff that Mom was personally willing to care for. It was a great world for kids. But not everyone was so lucky.

In some ways, that might be backwards. When I was growing up in the San Fernando Valley in the 1960s, my mother did lots of volunteer work for charities because raising me, an only child of rational and agreeable temperament, didn't take much of her time, especially after we got our first dryer (mid-1960s) and dishwasher (late 1960s). I entertained myself at the local park and library, and she didn't need to chauffeur me to a whole bunch of high-end after-school resume-fillers so that I could get into college. Instead, UCLA was always wide open to me. Plus, traffic was lighter, so I rode my bike everywhere.

If she had lived in Tiger Mother era, I suspect my mother would have enthusiastically Tiger Mothered me. But it was the era of the Pussycat Mother, so she didn't. For example, I played league baseball at the local park for seven seasons, from age 8 to 14. Neither of my parents ever attended a single one of my games, saying it would put too much pressure on me. Since I mostly struck out and dropped fly balls, that was A-OK with me. (Did I ever mention the time I got picked off first? With two outs in the bottom of the final inning with our team down by a run and the bases loaded? I didn't? Good.)

Today, both parents are supposed to arrive 45 minutes before the baseball game. Otherwise, as we all know from watching Steven Spielberg's Hook, your son's life will be ruined.

Today, to afford a house in that same neighborhood, both parents very likely will have to work. And unless they can navigate the complex application processes to get into the small number of exclusive public school programs, people who live in that neighborhood will also pay to send their kids to private school (the number of Jewish private schools, both Orthodox and Reform, in the neighborhood has skyrocketed as Jews, who were ideologically committed back then to sending their kids to public schools have since either got religion or moved to Portland). And to get into UCLA, the kids will have to be chauffeured to intensive after-school tutoring and activities. So, today, mom will have to work 40 hours per week for pay and may still have more mom-jobs to do with the kids than my bridge-playing mother had a generation ago.

A win-win!

(Also, in terms of actually helping people in need of charitable work, we've had this huge swing over the last generation from the charitable work being done by middle-class middle-aged women to their adolescent children trying to look good on college applications. Which demographic do you think was more productive at actually helping people who need help?)

What I notice among wives whose husbands make, say, $400k or higher, is that many of them will quit their professional careers to chauffeur their kids to their packed schedules, especially to manage them on the track to a top college. I've dubbed this the Winner Class.

The really giant change over the last 45 years was in my wife's dense neighborhood on the West Side of Chicago, Austin, where her father was a classical musician and union leader and her mother a teacher also raising four children. It was an urban idyll. When she was a first grader, she and her third grader sister walked a mile to school. After school, the huge number of kids in the neighborhood played together on the sidewalks until dark. Her father took the El to his job playing in the orchestra of the Chicago Lyric Opera or leading picketers against Opera management. (He played the most blue-collar of classical instruments, the tuba.) Up through 1966, it was a Matthew Yglesias dream of urbanism.

Suddenly, in 1967, things began changing. My inlaws, being dedicated liberal Democrats and union leaders, stuck it out through 1970. But when their kids got mugged on their street for the third time, they finally sold out, long after the other members of their local liberal group of homeowners had sold out, even though they had all promised each other to make this experiment in urban change work by never selling. They lost half their life savings, and didn't have indoor plumbing for their first two years on the farm they bought 63 miles from the opera house. My father-in-law, although he later was elected to three three-year terms as the leader of the Chicago Federation of Musicians union, never voted Democrat again.

Today, as in parts of Detroit, grass grows wild over the spots where many of her neighborhood's three-flats and apartment buildings once stood.

187 comments:

Anonymous
said...

"of generations of women whose sole destiny was the kitchen"

Being a at-home mother is being chained to the kitchen? Ridiculous! I hate BS like this. The woman had time to work on her garden, take stuff out from the library, read and write poetry, listen to music all day, meet with friends and play bridge, and enjoy lots of other freedom. With new appliances, women had more free time than ever before. Machines did the laundry and most of the cooking too. The real problem of at-home moms was not being chained to the kitchen but spending too much time watching shit like Donahue and getting funny ideas in their heads. Gosh, I wish I could enjoy free time of an at-home wife who didn't have to work!

Btw, if the 'sole destiny' of the woman was the 'kitchen', was the sole destiny of hubby-workers the noisy factory, Dilbertian cubicle, a stressful seat on the bus(Ralph Kramden), and/or long commuting hrs?

Parents don't need to chauffeur their kids that much to keep them competitive. At least if the child has a strong drive from the beginning. My sister she was always driven, president of everything, volunteering in this or that; beginning in middle school and throughout college and still today in med school she has many leadership positions. My parents did little to push her other than setting up a VERY STRONG foundation in her ethics. I'm kind of the opposite, for some reason I didn't and still don't have that same drive. I was always a very relaxed and a laid back student, I took a couple of APs, did fairly well on the SATs and now go to a good state uni. I understand what you're trying to get at though, blaming the increased competition resulting from high immigration (though maybe i'm wrong?), but it's not that bad. I don't think it's ever get as bad as it is now in Japan or Korea, where you have to study and go to cram school school AFTER school for another 8 hrs. I don't think our system encourages that arbitrary difficulty, and at least pushes students to do something fruitful with their free time.

"But rather than seeing that moment as primarily the product of policies like unionization, entitlements and high taxes, as is Krugman’s view, I believe that it was primarily the product of circumstance. We had just won a global war, and had limited competition;..."

It's funny how many elites can simultaneously hold the view that (1) free trade is great, it makes us all richer, only neanderthals haven't heard about comparative advantage; (2) the middle class needs to forget about the postwar boom years because it was an anomalous period since our trading partners were destroyed.

It's true that we faced little competition from abroad, but American companies had much smaller export markets to sell our cars and steel and other goods we used to make, except for the Keynesian stimulus provided by the Marshall Plan.

If these commentators really think that 1950-60s middle class Americans only had such large gains in wealth because Europe and Asia were in ruins (as opposed to many alternative reasons given by both Steve and Krugman) then their advice should be simple; support tariffs that limit outsourcing and competition from imports.

And yet, you never hear people who believe in (1) and (2) drawing this logical corollary.

As a nation we are much richer and more productive than in the postwar years, but 30 years of Reaganomics has left everyone but the bailed-out elite sinking or treading water.

Immigration and racial integration (of blacks) have done a lot to kill the idyllic suburban and urban existence. Another factor is the welfare-abated collapse of conservative social and family mores, which has hit the lower third of the bell curve quite hard.

The outsourcing of jobs, credentialization, and growing power of the finance industry have also concentrated wealth in fewer hands.

I think you're right Steve. Helping the middle class through changing our policies on globalization or oil production seems very difficult. I'm not saying it can't be done, but you don't often hear ideas that would clearly work. The Obama approach of pretending education reforms can produce a generation of innovators that "Wins the Future" (great acronym) is either hopelessly naive or a pathetic excuse for not wanting to deal with the real problems facing the American masses. Limiting immigration is the lowest hanging fruit for providing economic benefits to ourselves and our posterity.

What I notice among wives whose husbands make, say, $400k or higher, is that many of them will quit their professional careers to chauffeur their kids to their packed schedules, especially to manage them on the track to a top college. I've dubbed this the Winner Class.

I'd say that too. According to this, in 2006 only 6.2% of Americans had incomes exceeding $100K. So those ladies who have a hubby making $400K must be few and far between.

Anon -- Megan McCardle's real beef is women were stuck with ... BETA MALES! No one would complain being say, Posh Beckham. Five minutes of Alpha beats five years of Beta, as Roissy says. Most Middle and Working Class White women would prefer to have intermittent (shared) access to Alpha Males, and then be single mothers (with Alpha sired kids) even working very hard than ... be a Beta Male's wife. Even worse, raising the kids by a Beta Male.

In our family of mom, dad, and five kids, our mom certainly did not spend "most" of her time cleaning house and cooking for us. I'd estimate she spent 6-8 hours a day doing that. Of course those hours were out of sync with those of the rest of the family, with her busiest hours being after dad got home from work and we children got home from school.

It's called "division of labor". I'd think a wannabe libertarian like McArdle would have heard of the concept.

It is the Republicans' fault, Steve. Republicans have signed off on these immigration policies that have flooded SoCal with huge numbers of foreigners and killed the paradise. It was none other than Reagan who pushed the 1986 amnesty.

Even today, the WSJ/neoconservative Republicans (ie the people that run the party)are probably worse than the Democrats. At least the Democrats want amnesty for the just the current illegals. The Republican establishment wants the amnesty and a "guest worker" program.

Libertarians and politicians have one thing in common: they free-ride on technology.

Yes, because of technological progress, the quality of life is in the aggregate probably higher now than 1960, and will probably be higher still in 2050.

But the fact that the aggregate outcome is better does not change the fact that a lot of things were better in 1959. Or that the quality of life now would be *even higher* had we followed better policies such as limiting low skill immigration *and* had technological development.

1959 is perhaps the relative height of American civilization, the year in which the plot of the show Mad Men commences.

Examples:

* Crime was much lower in 1959.* Community ties were stronger (libertarians might not care about this, at least in theory, but 99% of the population do).

* The output of social capital was higher, as exemplified in voting, charity work, civic participation, etc.

* Fertility and family formation were higher in 1959.

* Out-of-wedlock births were much rarer in 1959

* Unemployment and under-employment was lower in 1959

* Work ethic was higher in 1959.

* Your teenager was far less likely to be part of a gang in 1959

* Income inequality was lower in 1959

* National cohesiveness was higher in 1959

* The level of Trust was higher in 1959

All of these make life better. A few aspects of culture were worse in 1959, such as racism (and to a much lesser extent) gender discrimination.

But since 1959, the culture on the whole has determinate. Sure, technology has improved dramatically, so the net effect of better technology and worse culture is a higher standard of life. But it is a logical fallacy for libertarians and liberals to claim everything has gotten better, or that no one has the right to yearn back to the superior aspects of 1959, just because life is better *overall* now.

Maintaining 1959 values, norms and social capital would not have interfered with technological development, if anything it would have been even faster.

This is what Sailer is trying to tell your about unskilled immigration: without it you would still have had the internet *and* avoided a lot of problems.

P.S

Krugman will not tell you this, but in 1959 non-defense government spending was merely 16% of national income, compared to 36% in 2010.

"Btw, if the 'sole destiny' of the woman was the 'kitchen', was the sole destiny of hubby-workers the noisy factory, Dilbertian cubicle, a stressful seat on the bus(Ralph Kramden), and/or long commuting hrs?"

Most jobs are not fun and most women don't want to be there. Only a few women benefit from feminism. Yes, some women had to work even in the first half of the 20th century to help make ends meet, but most, I am sure, would rather have stayed at home.

I say the men should stay at home and let all the women work and run the country.

Jane Gault really gets me. She views what women did for the last two thousand, or maybe two million years, as worthless low status unimportant stuff. Now that women can act exactly like men, go out and get a job, play office politics, squash enemies, fly fighter jets, they finally have forfillment and security.

Obviously the roles women assumed in the past were imposed on them by men who were more powerful in the culture in every way. (Did women shape culture in any way?)

In my wealthy suburb women, like men, work when they have to. Most highly educated lawyer women are retired whenever their husbands can afford to support the family on their own. Women MDs tend to keep practicing longer, albet at greatly reduced hours, in consideration of how lucretive their drugery hours are for themselves and their children and how many years and dollers are sunk costs.

Men of course do not like working any more then women but there is the requirement that men have higher status then their wives (the PUA are right on that one).

There are commenters on the McArdle thread arguing that Manzi and Krugman's idyllic recollections should be taken with a grain of salt, because they represent a world as processed by children.

Fair point, as far as it goes. So all right, then: Go talk to an 85-year-old instead. Male or female. White or black. Just someone who was in their 30s and 40s during those days. Odds are they'll have the same warm feelings about that era's American life.

Moreover, they'll tell you they were actively aware of that at the time. So it's not just some belated rose-colored nostalgia.

I'm in my early 40s, and I can assure you that my peers and I don't enjoy that same cozy feeling about the era we're living in. And neither do those 85-year-olds.

So yeah: I'm starting to be pretty convinced that America was, by and large, a better place to live before the mid-1960s. And I've grown weary of the revisionist narrative that tries to convince me it wasn't. It's like, yeah, OK, got it: America wasn't "Leave it to Beaver." But it was damned close enough.

I've spent my life as a rock freak, but you know, maybe they were right in 1955: Maybe Elvis Presley really was an existential danger. I've indulged in a good bit of licentiousness throughout my days, but maybe they were right: Maybe the sexual revolution really was a fundamental threat to social order and contentment. Maybe television and Hollywood really did erode society's fabric. Maybe the coarsening of public language -- like my "damned" above -- really was a cancer, a corrosive cynicism. And on and on.

There's that age-old eye-rolling retort -- "Yeah yeah, old people have fretted since time immemorial that the younger generation is screwing everything up." It's supposed to be the reassuring truism, the soothing argument-ender. But can't it be possible that at least once, somewhere on history's continuum, they were justified? At some point, in some set of circumstances, mightn't the old people, the prudes, the luddites be right to be scared?

Right, they averaged 1,200 pies cranked out per diem. No, their destiny was to spend every day with their children, and I'm sure that's how most of them primarily saw it. I have no wish to stop women from working - and I rather doubt it has much effect on the behavior of their kids as adults - but it would be better to eschew this sort of misrepresentation.

Also, the fact that one can no longer escape 'social problems' has done a lot to destroy the civil society that women participated in, and that's one reason why they now are generally unsatisfied to go without a job. In the suburban neighborhood with non-grid streets, that middle-class people are now forced to live in, there are a lot less houses and facilities you can casually walk to. This is very bad for civil society... sure, there might be 50 houses you could amble to in the non-grid burbs, but few of them are fully to your liking. On a grid there might be 300 families you can walk right over to, so a woman (or anyone) is much more apt to have close friends nearby, who do stuff with her, help locate opportunities for her kids and husband, etc. There's a natural drive to be present routinely in some form of 'society' outside the home, which used to be much more satisfiable in ways other than having a job (and still is in a small, safe town). Of course, I'm not saying this is the sole cause of women wanting to work.

The most amazing thing in this whole story is -- that Steve Sailer was able to post comments at the Atlantic website!!!

I thought Big Brother had definitively Unpersonned you over there. Not to be mentionned, doesn't exist, never existed.

Admittedly, you posted as "Steve", without a last name, but I would have thought the Atlantic's servers were programmed to give your computer the Ebola virus if they detected your IP.

Maybe you used a VPN (IP address disguiser)?

Or is McMegan a secret iSteve reader? But she seems so respectable and straightlaced, such a nice lady!

Of course she also lives in a "vibrantly diverse" part of DC, which tends to give HBD lessons whether you want them or not.

The "wall of silence" re. Steve, whom huge numbers of people clearly read, is still really striking. I guess the MSM strategy re. iSteve is a lot like the NYT's apparent strategy re. black crime in NYC: just don't report it at all (not even without reference to race, because when you give the suspect names too many people can figure out that Quanzell Washington probably isn't a WASP).

If we don't report it, it doesn't exist, or at least doesn't matter: the MSM mantra.

The Wikipedia article on Austin, Chicago tells the story (which follows a standard template) implicitly:

"Austin was a predominantly white neighborhood until the late 1960s (99.83% white in the 1960 census). [...] While white residents of Austin in the early 1960s generally thought negatively of leaving their neighborhood for the suburbs [...] significant riots began to occur on Chicago's West Side starting in 1965, and an especially damaging riot in 1968 (after Martin Luther King's death) prompted many white residents to leave. [...] By 1970, southern Austin (south of Lake St) was mostly black, and the neighborhood overall was 66% white and 33% black. Nearby neighborhoods such as East Garfield Park, West Garfield Park, and North Lawndale, were experiencing white flight before Austin did. Decay and a declining population in these neighborhoods led to an influx of black residents in Austin. By 1980, North Lawndale was 96.50% black, West Garfield Park was 98.85% black, East Garfield Park was 99.00% black, and Austin was 20.76% white and 73.78% black.

Jim Manzi: It’s difficult to convey the almost unbearable sweetness of this kind of American childhood to anybody who didn’t live it.

Nah. Bullshit. I had a non-American childhood as what here would be described as a gang member, fighting rivals with bicycle chains and knives. And yet I remember these times as unbearably sweet.

Manzi again: We had just won a global war, and had limited competition; we had a huge wave of immigration, followed by a multi-decade pause; oil was incredibly cheap; a backlog of technical developments had yet to be exploited and scaled up, and so forth

He says it all was a fluke, a "the product of circumstance". It wasn't. The global war was won because US was stronger than others, oil was incredibly cheap because US played a key role in finding it and establishing a huge market for it. The backlog of technical developments had not come about randomly - it was created, in large part in the USA, by Whites almost exclusively. It's not like Africa and Latin America were in competition. So the idyll was no fluke - it was the right people in the place with a lot of land.

"this is very bad for civil society... sure, there might be 50 houses you could amble to in the non-grid burbs, but few of them are fully to your liking. On a grid there might be 300 families you can walk right over to, so a woman (or anyone) is much more apt to have close friends nearby, who do stuff with her, help locate opportunities for her kids and husband, etc."

I'd add that high density helps people live near their extended families. My in-laws lived within a couple of miles of both their mother-in-laws, which saved them hugely on babysitting.

Today, my aunt in Arcadia lives about 40 miles from her grandchildren in Redondo Beach and not much closer to her grandchildren in Diamond Bar in the opposite direction. She drives constantly to help her daughters out.

Mmmm... Austin. (Chicago neighborhood) A few years ago I purchased heroin from a crew of prepubescents there. Can't say much good about the neighborhood now except for the quality heroin at open air drug markets.

"Of course, I'm not saying this is the sole cause of women wanting to work."

Rosie the Riveter in WWII had plenty of opportunities to work. So what did she do, the second the boys came home? She got married, gleefully quit that miserable job and made a beeline for the kitchen.

We women don't want to work. Proof? When we're there, we spend as much time as we can get away with yakking on the phone or gossiping with a coworker, while maintaining utmost vigilance that we never, ever, ever, do even a smidgen more work than is absolutely required.

I don't know where people get off saying that women didn't have jobs prior to '70s feminism. It wasn't really uncommon. In my family, my mom (who loved having a job and getting a paycheck) worked before she married, stopped to have kids, went parttime when I began kindergarten and fulltime a couple of years later. She kept working (from the '50s into the '70s) till she retired in her mid 50s. Two of my three aunts were fulltime workers for their entire adult lives, from the '40s into the '70s.

In the middle-class, small-town/suburban neighborhood where I grew up, a fair number of the mommies held jobs of one sort or another, some because they wanted to, others because they had to. it wasn't freakishly unusual. And the neighbor women who didn't have jobs weren't rising up in arms against an unjust system that was preventing them from realizing their talents on the job market. They were generally very happy not to have to report to a factory or office every day.

Heck, given the drudgery most of the daddies in the neighborhood performed, my own dream was to grow up and live more like the leisured ladies than the beaten-down men.

I've Googled the figure and it turns out that in the 1950s 33% of American women were considered to be in the labor force. That's not an inconsiderable number. Why are they overlooked in these discussions?

Miss McArdle is a prime example of why it would have been better for everyone if an infant Germaine Greer had been eaten by dingoes.

My wife (vice-president and general manager of our family's logistics business) wishes to God that her "only destiny" was the kitchen. She loves the kitchen, loves cooking, loves what used to be called homemaking. She has often expressed to me her dear wish that she could be one of those poor, mad housewives of the 1950s, staying at home and experiencing every golden moment of our children's lives.

No one lies on their deathbed and with their last breath says "If only I'd spent more time working."

Three things undermined that way of life: automation in the home, 1965 immigration reform, and the passage of Nafta and Gatt.All three increased the supply of labor and/or decreased its demand relative to capital.

The remedy for bad trade and immigration policies are obvious. The remedy for labor saving technologies less so:

I'm troubled by the comments above. My mother, born in the 1930s, who died last week, was a psychiatrist who NEVER practiced after I was born in the early 1960s. Before her death, she lamented the choices she had made including staying home with her two kids.

I'm in my 40s with a PhD from an Ivy. I, too, stayed home with my kids after they were born as well as home-schooled. Then, to my horror, my husband declared himself "gay."

I'm divorcing, obviously. It should be completed in a couple months.

Forced back into the job market, I'm finding that the years I spent with my children were "wasted," as one interviewer put it. I regret not working while raising kids. Face it: raising kids is intellectually deadening. Perhaps some women find kids challenging, and perhaps I didn't put enough into raising them to find it interesting. In retrospect, I don't know.

What I do know, however, is I've lost 15 years of working life. I'll never get those years back. I'll never "live up to my potential," as my mother used to say. I'll never contribute to society as I could have, and I'll never be able to "give back to society" as I had expected.

I'll stop now. You'll probably think I'm self-absorbed, but either castigating or lauding women who stay at home -- either extreme -- is lacking the nuance that a honest life demands.

Our role was bearing the next generation and raising them to be hard working, productive, decent people.

Sure, that meant we saved the family money by cooking and caring for our beloved families ourselves, but it was labor with a purpose. Upper middle class kids raised and fed by surrogate illiterate Mexican peasants are not only fewer in number, they are also inadequately nurtured.

My friend who teaches rich kids at an expensive private school noted that rich and poor kids have the same problems because they are raised by the same people, poor women.

Are there any major metros where housing prices are low, jobs are plentiful, and NAMs are scarce? A lot of the affordable, high-growth metros (Atlanta, Dallas, Houston) have huge numbers of immigrants and NAMs.

"I've Googled the figure and it turns out that in the 1950s 33% of American women were considered to be in the labor force. That's not an inconsiderable number. Why are they overlooked..."

They were not overlooked.

Feminism was about power.

Chicks don't really want to work.

They want power over others and prestige.

When was the last time you saw a woman out pouring concrete, or working as a plumber, electrician or in sanitation? Those jobs pay pretty good. Oh but they aren't easy, or clean or prestigious. Chicks always look to move up. They want something easier or more prestigious than house wife and mother to below average children. If her kids are above average, there is prestige in being a house wife and mother and it is easier than working the pink ghetto. If she is a professional, it depends on how much hubby makes and how much prestige he has.

You're young(ish) and you're smart. I have two relatives (one whose husband unexpectedly left when her youngest child was about 13) whose professional lives only really got into gear when they were in their 50s. They started collaborating on writing books together and it has opened a whole new chapter in their professional lives, especially for the divorcee. You know more now than you did in your 20s, you know more people, and you've had a lot more experiences. Don't give up! You have a lot to offer the world.

Ah, the "Good old days". Did you realize that 1952 Stalinist Russia had radio's, penicillin and motor cars and Russians in 1914 didn't? Or that people in Nazi Germany had indoor plumbing, unlike the Middle ages?

You see, everything always gets better, the "Good ol' days" are an illusion.

I guess it depends on the kids. Mine are fun, funny, sweet, cute, curious, loyal, athletic, playful, talented and downright delightful. I am sorry that yours suck. (Just slapping you to get you to wake up and snap out of it)

"I didn't put enough into raising them to find it interesting."

You are probably right.

"In retrospect, I don't know."

Amazing insight. I can see how you got a Ph.D.

"What I do know, however, is I've lost 15 years of working life."

Yeah, you'll be lamenting that on your deathbed. It used to be folks told their therapist that dad was distant, the next wave will tell the therapist that mom and dad were too distant.

"I'll never get those years back. I'll never "live up to my potential," as my mother used to say. I'll never contribute to society as I could have, and I'll never be able to "give back to society" as I had expected."

Yeah, but at least you will have someone else to blame.

That may seem like cold comfort, but consider how much more depressed you would be if you had worked those 15 years and still contributed nothing of any grandiose proportions.

Here is the deal. You are a woman. You are smart and the biggest and most valuable contribution contribution you can make is a bunch of smart kids. Years of evil brainwashing made you believe you could "make a difference" with your talents out in the workforce. The problem is the likelihood of that is infinitesimally small. Step one, honesty. They lied. You believed. No matter how bad the truth is, it is still better to face it.

Good luck and give your kids a hug and quit lamenting the good you did and quit fantasizing that you would have been the female Tesla, if only blah, blah, blah.

"Ah, the "Good old days". Did you realize that 1952 Stalinist Russia had radio's, penicillin and motor cars and Russians in 1914 didn't? Or that people in Nazi Germany had indoor plumbing, unlike the Middle ages?

You see, everything always gets better, the "Good ol' days" are an illusion."

Stupid, stupid comment. The point has already been made that technical advances happen regardless of most social changes (up to a point); we could have had all of our current technical advances, without the totally unnecessary disadvantages brought about by mass NAM immigration (legal and illegal) over the past 46 years.

And don't you think Communist Russia and Nazi Germany could have been even better, you know, without all that unfortunate unpleasantness, mass starvation, concentration camps, etc? The plumbing and electricity won't go away if you make things better socially/politically with better public policy choices.

And things do not automatically always get better. Citizens of the Roman Empire in the West thought that things would always get better - until things went into steep decline for a few centuries resulting in the Dark Ages. History is not on an automatic and inexorable upward march. Policy choices do matter.

The problem here is centralizing the marginal and marginalizing the central. Exceptional women want to work. Most women don't have "careers" but rather jobs. So they don't want to work.

Should society be structured for the median woman or the exceptional woman?

Unlike the exceptional man, who actually invents new technologies, the exceptional woman is primarily outstanding in that she is competitive with the above average man. Not worth pushing the TFR below 2.1.

Well Steve, you fail to mention the national trauma of the period 1960-70, that resulted in a national collective nervous breakdown for the USA - and ended in the corruption of Nixon. Basically JFK started it all by pandering to the black vote (he had to show how 'compassionate he was), getting embroiled in Vietnam and younger brother Teddy brought in the coup-de-grace, the 1965 Immigration Act. I've always thought that Kennedy, an Irishman and descedant of famine refugees wanted to destroy the WASP establishment by cobbling together an anti-WASP alliance of 'ethnics' (we never use that phrase anymore), Irishmen, Jews and blacks.That klutz LBJ continued the mischief and intensified it.During that period the blacks acted up, shouted and screamed , terrorized - and got everything they wanted.Things were never the same again.The hippies and leftists added to the filth. Basically what we have today is the direct legacy of those times, it's Kennedy's LBJ's and MLK's vision made flesh, and look where it's got us. And the Republicans were just as horrible.They talked a good fight, but in the end did nothing to repeal the JFK legacy - the only people whom they benefitted were the mega-rich - they sh*tted on the Democrat refugees who voted for them.The Bush 'Amnesty' says it all.

Kristen, I agree that, as your story suggest, things are not so simple as some may make things out. Most women staying at home is only one piece of the puzzle. For that to happen, divorce must be almost non-existent, lest, as what happened to you, a house wife's means of support disappears. And, married men have to make an above market wage, because they are married (this used to be quite common). And, of course, women had children much younger. If you added these changes to your story, you would have had children well before your Ph.D., stayed married and been able to be supported at a higher level by your husbands higher salary. Instead of pursuing a Ph.D., you could have pursued writing, volunteering, organizing, or challenging hobbies like gardening, painting, piano, etc. But, in an era of no-fault divorce at 50%, later marriage and child-bearing, and lower salaries for men, your story is all too common.

"I entertained myself at the local park and library, and she didn't need to chauffeur me to a whole bunch of high-end after-school resume-fillers so that I could get into college."

That was true as late as the '80s, in suburban NYC. We didn't have chauffeurs; we had bikes. We rode our bikes to the library, to the parks. We'd ride home when it started to get dark.

"My wife (vice-president and general manager of our family's logistics business) wishes to God that her "only destiny" was the kitchen. She loves the kitchen, loves cooking, loves what used to be called homemaking."

So does Megan McCardle! Check her blog archives from December, when she posts her annual kitchen appliance porn buying guide -- there's not an expensive appliance or utensil Megan doesn't own, and she loves to cook.

Steve, interesting memory of Austin,Chicago. It has always puzzled me why one of the areas in Chicago with the best housing stock would turn into slum in the cause of 20 years. This was an area untouched by the otherwise devastating King riots. Around 1970 solidly built brownstones and 3flats could be picked up at firesale prices in Austin. The new owners were not gangbangets, but middle class blacks with jobs. So why is crossing Ausin ave from Oak Park now like entering a war zone.

At some point there must come a revisionist history of "white flight". Talk to any geezer in the Chicago burbs ( who wants to talk ) ,and it surfaces that the panic sale and move to the burbs was the most traumatic experience of their lives, same as seen in refugees of war and other disasters.

"I've always thought that Kennedy, an Irishman and descedant of famine refugees wanted to destroy the WASP establishment by cobbling together an anti-WASP alliance of 'ethnics' "

You're whole comment is great food for thought for someone who wasn't born until the end of the 60s so doesn't have the perspective of having lived through the era. I prefer, however, to blame the WASPs takedown on the Jews. And there has to be a sinister Convince WASPs not to Breed plot in there somewhere perhaps by the Russians. Having endured a little WASP snobbery out of the elder generation I kinda see what you're getting at though.

It is incredible how quickly neighborhoods like Austin changed. I lived just north of Austin in the late 70's and some of those areas changed completely within a year's time. The only people who could successfully escape were the richer types. The middle and lower income types were screwed by the scare tactics of certain real estate establishments. I still drive through my old neighborhoods every once in a while and am astounded by the decay and decadence. At the time I lived there I though that I was living in a nice clean middle class area. Now the places look like slums. Whats the cause? If you are a realist you don't need to guess. Destroying neighborhoods is good for business just like giving out driver licenses to everyone who can breathe is good for business. More car crashes, more insurances, for repairs, more car sales etc. Our economy is dependent to a degree on high degree of sustained destruction and population growth. If our population ceases to expand the ponzi scheme will come to a crash. This will be good for some but bad for others. Our royalty needs a large subservient population who can worship and give them money and they don't care what that population is comprised of.

"Are there any major metros where housing prices are low, jobs are plentiful, and NAMs are scarce?"

I believe small metros in a few midwestern states like North Dakota and maybe Nebraska are desperately looking for people to hire for what appear to be pretty good jobs that can't be filled by barely literate non English speaking laborers.

There's also the possibility that if you decide to move mostly avoid NAMs they'll be colonizing the area just about the time you and you're small family show up and their population will grow exponentially.

I've always thought that Kennedy, an Irishman and descedant of famine refugees wanted to destroy the WASP establishment

Yes but can we please not forget the fecklessness of the WASP establishment? John Lindsay? Nelson Rockefeller? George H. W. Bush? Somewhere along the line, all the fire went out of the belly.

* * *

Of course she also lives in a "vibrantly diverse" part of DC, which tends to give HBD lessons whether you want them or not.

Hasn't McMegan had her bike stolen out of her garage four times or something?

* * *

I drove through a great deal of Detroit today. How some people deny HBD, I will never know. Maybe they only encounter the Eric Holders and Barack Obamas.

Yes this is huge. Many of us growing up in lily-white suburbs (still a few of those in 1980s CA) learned about blacks through Carl Lewis, the Cosby family, and inspirational pap in school textbooks. What's not to like? Then you go to a private college with a carefully selected student body. What's not to like? Diversity is just a matter of everyone saying nice things to each other.

It's only when, post-college with a liberal arts degree, you move in to a wonderfully vibrantly diverse urban neighborhood with plenty of NAMs, that you start to question these things.

Anyone who lives in a sufficiently white area -- and let's not forget, these include most of Portland, Oregon, etc., as well as ALL the elite neighborhoods in all the elite cities, is able to continue telling themselves pretty lies, because the only people they meet on their block ARE the Obama types.

For one thing, unless your children are also homosexual, they will probably side with you instead of their father.

Another thing, you can probably fairly easily get another male, should you wish. If your looks are enough to cause a gay to repress that part of his personality for years, then I gather that you are on the right side of the looks bell curve.

""I was pointing out how strange it was that people were writing about how good the good old days were...

on the INTERNET.

Must've been wonderful to type the Steve Sailer blog on a manual typewriter and then bicycle to the homes of anyone who wanted to read it."

LOL. They've got an excellent point there, Steve-O: Progress is progress, and life 'aint Furrs Cafeteria. Either you want to live in the past or you want to live in the present you don't get to pick and choose your own hybrid reality!

You are self-absorbed, because your Ivy PHD has somehow not taught you the "grass is greener" parable.

Talk about intellectually deadening, try being a 45 year old woman with your PHD, $100,000 a year and no kids, with you equally self-absorbed girlfriends playing the cougar role to get attention in a local bar...

My fellows, Americans! The overseas reader want to know. I have heard a lot about the wonderful days of the 1950's when a family could live comfortably off Dad's salary.

How about if we look a the standard of living in absolute terms? If we look at the typical 1959 house; in sq ft per inhabitant, appliances and entertainment gadgetry, quality of building materials and installations, etc, etc. What about the family car, in terms of technical sophistication, rather than terms of nostalgic appeal?

I'd wager that you could afford all these things on a single salary today as well, but people today want more. Not better things, but more.

Education for your kids and health care options has probably changed more, and perhaps the cost and difficulty in choosing these items would tip the scales in favour of the 1950's?

The social life and the quality/unity of the community are harder still to put a price on.

So help me out here. I ask in earnest. From a distance it looks as if you are much better off than in the 1950's, but if so, why are you unhappy?

the number of Jewish private schools, both Orthodox and Reform, in the neighborhood has skyrocketed as Jews, who were ideologically committed back then to sending their kids to public schools have since either got religion or moved to Portland).

How convenient. Just as they destroyed gentile society, they either left or insulated themselves from the blacks and Mexicans who trashed the place. They weren't ideologically committed to sending their kids to schools with non-whites; they were committed to your kids going to school with them.

"No one lies on their deathbed and with their last breath says "If only I'd spent more time working."

Please. That's such an empty cliche. Any man with a real vocation and purpose in life finds family life stifling. Most great writers and painters would gladly trade away a year of family time for one more great work of art. Thomas Edison and Henry Ford were happier at work than at home. so were Patton and Rommel. And I really doubt Bill Clinton will be regretting he didn't spend more time with Hilary and Chelsea.

Exactly. That's why so many women have jobs that "explore" possibilities or do "outreach" in the "community". Inevitably, they recommend or "resolve" that more diversity and inclusiveness are needed. And they get fancy titles and nice salaries for, basically, bossing the rest of us around. Of course, women could stay home and boss their families around there. (And many do both.) But that doesn't pay as handsomely or have the same prestige. "Domestic tyrant" just doesn't have the same ring to it as "Director of Community Outreach and Social Resources".

The 50s were overripe with Last Man secular hedonism (though restrained by the legacy of tradition). That's why they were crushed so easily by the revolutionaries of 1965-70. Real heroes of the 50s would have to be found within the pre-Vatican II Church and among the McCarthyites.

"I've always thought that Kennedy, an Irishman and descendant of famine refugees wanted to destroy the WASP establishment by cobbling together an anti-WASP alliance of 'ethnics' (we never use that phrase anymore), Irishmen, Jews and blacks."

I agree with this statement. Americans of Irish extraction have always been tied to the Democratic Party e.g. urban political machines. While the Irish have historically had a strong distaste for Black Americans, their leaders saw the political advantages of forming an alliance with them and the Jews in opposition to the British/Dutch/German descended power structure of the U.S. which leaned towards the Republican party. It is the Italian, Polish, and Slovak descended voters who are in the middle and have been critical to national elections. This is the true 'Catholic' vote that the national media always talks about. The Irish Catholics vote Democrat and the German Catholics vote Republican. Both groups are similar in size and cancel each other out. Its the other groups who are up for grabs and are the reason presidential candidates spend so much time fighting over white voters in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and similar states.

"Maybe Elvis Presley really was an existential danger. ... Maybe the sexual revolution really was a fundamental threat to social order and contentment. Maybe television and Hollywood really did erode society's fabric. Maybe the coarsening of public language -- like my "damned" above -- really was a cancer, a corrosive cynicism."

I think this all ties together, and is connected with the decline of religious participation. The mass culture of Hollywood (and later pop music and TV) drove out the culture supplied by organized religion. The purveyors of mass culture replaced Judeo-Christian morality with "do-it-yourself" morality, which (as Steve and others have repeatedly observed) was and is a disaster for those of middling and low intelligence.

All the controversy about immigration can be fundamentally resolvable empirically. The key issue is the IQ of the second and third generations. Sowell- a Black conservative - joins the the liberals in believing that the IQs of those subsequent generations go up. The great majority of the evidence however shows no gains for Hispanics and Blacks.

It is true that my people the Irish were dumb and violent when they got to America. The best evidence is that the Irish IQ was about 85. That was true for Italians too. So the Irish and Italian neighborhoods were violent, chaotic, and filled with crime - just like modern Black or Hispanic neighborhoods.

But the Irish changed, as did the Italians. Today their IQs are the same as those of the largely British and German based natives. That hasn't happened for Blacks and it doesn't seem likely for Hispanics.

Cultural oppression can indeed suppress your brains but the opposite isn't true. Just because your group's IQ is low doesn't necessarily mean that you have been disadvantaged.

One clear and unambiguous difference between the early Irish immigrants and today's Blacks is simply brain size. The Irish have about 80cc more of prefrontal brain tissue than do Blacks.

If all people would transform into solid Americans after only a generation or so then I would be for unrestricted immigration - as would every decent person. But 23 generations ago my remote ancestor Abraham Piersay introduced Blacks into America as field hands. Their progeny have not adjusted. They are still the same high crime, low achievement people they were before. Japanese when brought into Hawaii as field hands, took over the State. Chinese immigrants have had a similar history.

Absent any new technology, low IQ immigrants merely fill up your electorate with a permanent problem class. They do not melt in the pot or morph into good citizens.

Feminist "choice" is the rich white girl's disease that she and her rich white mommies and friends have inflicted upon hundreds of millions of white women who would rather be moms than over-the-road truckers, plumbers, Kinko's clerks, roofers, burger slingers or WalMart greeters.

Megan, honey, only one out of four people get a college degree. Read your labor history, sugar. "Choice" historically means working in sweatshops.

This explains in a nutshell why Mexicans are having more babies than Meganite white girls. Mexican women know true poverty and oppression.

They know that making, feeding, protecting, and loving family is the only way to survive long term.

If he was upper middle class. If he was MMC or lower, he was very likely part of a gang, whatever his ethnicity. In lower-class communities, literally every teenage male was part of a gang.

I could argue that things were better in 1832. Not only were blacks kept in their places, but so were uppity arrogant know-it-all dummies. No unions, no GI Bill, no public schools. Church and state were better separated in 1832 than in 1959 or 2011. And so on.

How come blacks never get credit for checking Latino immigration on the street level? In the aftermath of the LA riots, blacks were driven out of LA and the LAPD was neutered, setting up an ideal situation for illegal immigration --- no resitance. Sailer is apparently the last line of defense in So Cal.

Whiskey again sees BETA Males everywhere. Let's think about that for a moment.

On the face of it this Beta-Alpha talk sounds vaguely ethological - like something Ardrey or Tinbergen would talk about. But no, actual observers of apes and dogs speak of five levels of dominance with alpha at to top and omega at the bottom. Beta males are high ranking who get social preference and access to females. On monkey island Beta males are winners.

Or maybe Beta is a psychological construction. But again no. In the old personality theories there were those who followed Cattell and those who followed Eysenck. But these theorists largely ignored dominance as as dimension and both believed in factor analysis. There were many posited dimensions of human personality in those days but the field got thinned by factor analysis. Eventually we came to Big 5 Theory. Almost all serious personality scholars today agree on the five factors - and only five factors - in the human psyche.

Alpha-beta dominance is not one of the five.

Water is the universal solvent. That's why water is important to find on distant worlds. Similarly IQ or 'g' is the "general" factor found in almost every test. Consequently there is a very rich literature on g. Thousands of studies and dozens of big thick books.

There is nothing like that around Alpha-Beta dominance. That's not to say there is no such dimension, just that it isn't central.

For example is there a real study that correlates Alpha status with number of bar pickups? Or subsequent matings? Not likely. There are no good tests on dominance at all. If I say so and so has an IQ of 145 you might ask if that were his score on the WAIS or the SB LM scale. There is no similar dominance scale or literature. All Whiskey's blather about Alpha is anecdotal. Not exactly "old wives's tales". More like "young bachelor's tales".

During that period the blacks acted up, shouted and screamed , terrorized - and got everything they wanted.Things were never the same again.

Our fate was sealed long before 1960. Thomas Dixon foresaw the problem as early as 1902 in his novel The Leopard Spots:

"Nationality demands solidarity. And you can never get solidarity in a nation of equal rights out of two hostile races that do not intermarry. In a Democracy you can not build inside of a nation of two antagonistic races, and therefore the future American must be either an Anglo Saxon or a Mulatto. And if a Mulatto, will the future be worth discussing?"

I've always thought that Kennedy, an Irishman and descedant of famine refugees wanted to destroy the WASP establishment by cobbling together an anti-WASP alliance of 'ethnics' (we never use that phrase anymore), Irishmen, Jews and blacks.That klutz LBJ continued the mischief and intensified it.

I guess that wicked LBJ was an Irishman too, huh?

You start with your prejudices and assemble your facts to support them.

Well, I fully recognize that Steve and about 95% of his commenters are almost monomaniacally focused on immigration as being the primary culprit in all of America's problems of the last 50 (100? 200? 300?) years.

But I'll still bet that if a vast horde of Mexican illegals had arrived in the Chicago area about 30 years earlier than they eventually did, Steve's in-laws wouldn't have lost their home and their life-savings, and would probably still be living there. After all, Steve's still living in LA, isn't he, probably America's most heavily Hispanic/immigrant large city?...

My mother, born in the 1930s, who died last week, was a psychiatrist who NEVER practiced after I was born in the early 1960s. Before her death, she lamented the choices she had made including staying home with her two kids.

You do realize that if she were able to retroactively change her choices, you would not be here today to write your comment lamenting her choices?

I'll never be able to "give back to society" as I had expected.

The important thing is to give back to society as society expects, not as you expect. And you've already done that. On behalf of society, thank you.

>I say the men should stay at home and let all the women work and run the country.<

We're almost there. Btw, most everyday work in Africa is done by the women. A feminist paradise?

>I'll never contribute to society as I could have<

It isn't obvious why creating two decent children is a lesser contribution to society than doing whatever you could have realistically done with that Ph.d. Perhaps you're thinking of lost income?

Please don't regret your choices. Everyone is finding it difficult to get a job these days, and most private sector jobs are non-optimal. The problem is at least 90% not you or your past, despite what some bastard may have told you.

>Stupid, stupid comment.<

It was a sarcastic comment that went over your head. Read it again. It drips with snark.

>there's not an expensive appliance or utensil Megan doesn't own, and she loves to cook.<

My experience is that such women cook only three or four times a year. Their kitchen appliances are merely totems of female wealth, power, and status, not tools that are regularly used.

The elites represented as "liberation" female wage-slavery, female combat service, and whoredom. They sold that bill of goods merely in order to avail themselves of the full services of another 50% of the population. And we bought it - we, gullible we.

Kristen, you've discovered that your husband is gay, you're getting a divorce, and you've lost your mother, all in a very short period of time. Don't discount understandable depression as a factor in your current second guessing of your life choices.

You are absolutely correct, however, that for all the lauding of the stay at home mom on sites like this one, the experience certainly doesn't mean squat to employers when mom has to get a job.

There's a point everyone here is missing about women, but to make it I have to detour into some basics about law practice. I take it that many of the higher income working women you know are lawyers, right? Here's a secret: most women lawyers work in the lower tiers of corporate defense, such as employment law, where much of the activity involves low-g rote recitation such as "objection, burdensome," and then writing a letter to the client saying, "We objected on the basis of burdensomeness" (.6 hr.). In the course of a week you really fill up a timesheet with that stuff. In other words, there are a lot of erstwhile elementary school teachers in these jobs. (My law class in 1982 had at least 20 former teachers). The reason women didn't want to be elementary school teachers anymore is because they could no longer control the kids. The kids who couldn't/can't be controlled are of course blacks. It is entirely possible that the late '50's-early '60's quality of life would still be here, despite immigration, if blacks had remained controllable. So, TD, the problem wasn't being a rocker, the problem was that rockers thought they had to be adversarial toward the culture generally, and this meant emancipating blacks from any requirement of civil living. The two didn't have to go together. Probably even today, you think blacks are inherently "cool," right?

I fully recognize that Steve and about 95% of his commenters are almost monomaniacally focused on immigration as being the primary culprit in all of America's problems of the last 50 (100? 200? 300?) years.

Do you fully recognize that all the "real" media, including The American Conservative", refuse to discuss the issue at all except to cheerlead for more immigration?

You often act a lot less smarter than you really are. It's true that Steve and his entourage see immigration related causes of many social problems, but A) they often give good reasons for that (facts, logical reasoning and B) they can mainly voice these thoughts on a few blogs (like iSteve).

So, if you'd honestly ask yourself why these people are 'monomaniacally' focused on immigration, you'd also realize they aren't really obsessively focused. They just come here because there are not many other places they can go to.

We hear and read all sorts of reasons for social ills, but HBD and/or immigration related causes of social ills are usually left out of the picture. I don't see much wrong with people pointing out to Paul Krugman (whenever he's raging again) that mass immigration helped change the country he grew up in; as you may know Krugman laments the current state of his country much and often.

Nobody goes to the Yankees fanforum or Climate Audit and bust their balls for being respectively Yankee-centric and obsessed with AGW skepticism. Why fault Vdare writers and readers for focusing on, what they call, 'the national question'?

But I'll still bet that if a vast horde of Mexican illegals had arrived in the Chicago area about 30 years earlier than they eventually did, Steve's in-laws wouldn't have lost their home and their life-savings, and would probably still be living there. After all, Steve's still living in LA, isn't he, probably America's most heavily Hispanic/immigrant large city?...

Well, in Chicago the Hispanics have tended to drive out the blacks. However, plenty of good examples in the suburbs and exurbs, places where the whites fled the Mexicans

"My father-in-law, although he later was elected to three three-year terms as the leader of the Chicago Federation of Musicians union, never voted Democrat again."

Understandable, but it's doubtful that Republicans like Paul Ryan stay awake at night thinking about how to help people like your father-in-law. If GOP voters have legitimate grievances against affirmative action and immigration policies that worsened their standard of living then they should start electing politicians who want to address those grievances. It's hard to see how many people will be helped by ending Medicare or sending all the jobs overseas.

"Around 1970 solidly built brownstones and 3flats could be picked up at firesale prices in Austin. The new owners were not gangbangets, but middle class blacks with jobs."

That was the first wave of integration in 1967: middle class blacks who were good neighbors. Lots of whites were terrified and started selling. My inlaws joined a liberal Catholic group run a priest who composed operas with Father Andrew Greeley and they all swore to each other they'd never sell.

Soon, the middle class blacks were abandoning the neighborhood, too. It turned underclass in a couple of years.

"So why is crossing Ausin ave from Oak Park now like entering a war zone."

Because Oak Park, where my father lived from 1917-1929, instituted a patently illegal but sane and successful "black-a-block" program of imposing quotas on realtors that allowed them to sell to only black family per block. Plus, the aesthetic distinction of the housing stock might be the highest in the country. My dad, for example, lived next door to this crazy Japanese/Tudor giant cottage redesigned by Frank Lloyd Wright after he got back from building the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo.

"Harvard administrators, the memo stated, “were having difficulty with his financial arrangements and couldn’t seem to figure out how many wives he had.”

"According to a memo written by an INS official in Honolulu, the adviser said Obama had been “running around with several girls since he first arrived here and last summer she cautioned him about his playboy ways.”

Obama told the adviser that he had divorced his wife in Kenya.

He told the president’s mother the same thing, though she would later learn it was a lie."

Anon sez:He told the president’s mother the same thing, though she would later learn it was a lie."

I currently live in South Africa and work on a daily basis with blacks. The truth is treated as a convenience here in Africa. It has no meaning in itself. That's why that Obama PAC-robot, "Truth", is using his handle.

"I'd wager that you could afford all these things on a single salary today as well, but people today want more. Not better things, but more."

Oh, b.s. My father, on a carpenter's income (which was paid at good, skilled-trade wages back then) in 1961 built his own 4-bedroom, two-car-garage house in a new and upcoming neighborhood, and owned it FREE AND CLEAR from Day 1.

(He was able to do this because he moved the family in when it was just weatherized but not finished, and finished it over the next several years, as he got the money. Note: This is now illegal. A house must now be FINISHED and an occupancy permit granted before anyone can move in. This is one of the reasons why people must take out backbreaking 30-year mortgages.)

He raised and provided for FIVE kids and a wife who never worked after marriage. Mom drove a station wagon and dad always had a newish 4-W-D pickup. He was an early adopter of carphones. We took nice vacations and had a Winnebago for a while.

He eventually started his own homebuilding corporation, which enabled him to put three of us through college, supported one during apprenticeship, and gave the downpayment for the first house to another.

And he did all this AND retired with a nice chunk of change.

No-way-no-how can that life trajectory be repeated. Laws, taxes, inflation and illegal immigration simply disallow it.

"If all people would transform into solid Americans after only a generation or so then I would be for unrestricted immigration - as would every decent person."

Albert, I'm sick at heart to read this from you.

NO, every decent person would NOT be for unrestricted immigration if they all became solid Americans.Decent people can want immigration ended because WE ARE ALL FULL UP here. Decent people feel a sense of fellowship with already-Americans, and can wish to not to increase their commuting / traffic / noise / lack of open space burden by importing millions more bodies.

Megan is, to put it kindly, a homely girl. A world where (almost) all women come to an arrangement with a single man that they meet in high school or college where he'll support her and she'll raise their children and keep their home doesn't have much appeal to her since she wouldn't have the pick of the socially dominant alpha types nor of the quality provider beta types.

In other words, Megan's looks couldn't buy her a decent life.

That's what feminism is all about. There are women out there who are at the bottom of the barrel in desirability as wives but are more competent as workers than their sexual equals would be - these women have better lives (well, sort of) than they would have had otherwise. Being women, they don't really think through the full ramifications - they might have actually been happier if they simply married their equal at 22 rather than having a wedding announcement in the NYTimes at 37 (or however old she was).

Now, the new social contract is undoubtedly worse for men and women who do get married but how are you going to convince someone who wouldn't have even had the opportunity to be a suburban housewife that going back to the old ways is better?

Well, I fully recognize that Steve and about 95% of his commenters are almost monomaniacally focused on immigration as being the primary culprit in all of America's problems of the last 50 (100? 200? 300?) years.

Even if you are skeptical of untrammeled immigration being the root of many of our problems (like myself), it is worth noting that reasoned debate on immigration occurs only in places like this blog.

It is also too easy to note the cognitive dissidence that is so common to liberals. Liberals prattle endlessly about how important education is for societal benefit. Yet they believe that mass immigration of uneducated people is also of social benefit. These are logically contradictory to each other, yet firmly believed by liberals (and many conservatives).

--Are there any major metros where housing prices are low, jobs are plentiful, and NAMs are scarce?

Minneapolis/St. Paul has neighborhoods with relatively low housing prices, plentiful careers, and little ethnic diversity even as the larger metro has a peculiar mix of ethnic minority groups (the Somalis might be Islamist, but they don't like Black gangbangers, and the Hmong absolutely, positively, will not allow their kids to hang out on street corners). It is largely still the kind of place that Manzi and Krugman remember. There are neighborhoods where couples marry and then move within 3 blocks of their parents' house, which is 3 blocks at most from grandma's house, too;mothers stay home; children walk to school; kids ride bikes to the parks unsupervised; children are allowed to play at parks unsupervised without anyone worrying about needles, condoms, or other illicit activities happening, etc. It's sweetness itself for kids. It's ridiculously insular, though, and outsiders have a hard time adjusting.

As a result of this idyllic life, though, it's nigh impossible to convince the people here that immigration is a problem. It's utterly impossible to convince them that Islamists pose a threat. And in the end, they'd all just go to the lake if things got really bad, so what does it matter to them?

Was there some specific federal program that effected this change so quickly and so uniformly? Just the removal of barriers wouldn't be enough to explain the overnight transformation of large swaths of the country.

While the Irish have historically had a strong distaste for Black Americans, their leaders saw the political advantages of forming an alliance with them and the Jews in opposition to the British/Dutch/German descended power structure of the U.S. which leaned towards the Republican party.

For the record: 138 Republican congressmen voted to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act and only 34 voted against.

What was so great about the 1950s anyway? The rot popularly considered to have started in the 1960s was in place many decades earlier. Just because there were no violent blacks or immigrants in white communities! The black "gangstas" merely picked up where the borderline-retarded white dummies left off.

I think, as someone here said, if we were to glorify a previous decade, why not the 1830s?

In the 1830s, men could be men (and I mean MEN not goose-stepping robots), women could be women, land was cheap, labor was cheap. People all minded their own business. And there was none of the Victorian and post-Victorian police state mentality. If the local cops and preachers harassed you in one town, you just moved on to a better town and paid your taxes there.

Sure, no antibiotics - but no antibiotic-resistant germs either, or new flu viruses imported from China each winter.

And a gold or silver dollar - all currency was backed by solid metal - could buy a gentleman a steak dinner and a night in a whorehouse. Both of which were high quality and delivered with the utmost respect, under penalty of horse whipping.

Yeah, pretty much. You used the word "I" eighteen times in a 239-word post -- that's one reference to YOURself and YOUR needs every 13.3 words! I didn't count your references to "me", "my" and "mine", or the frequency of your self references would have been higher.

I hereby propose the Kristen (Kr) as the SI unit of measure of self-absorption. 1 self reference per 10 words equals a self-absorption of 1 Kr.

@DanJ: My wife and I decided years ago that 1959 was a good place to be. We live in a small 1959 house in the inner city, have one car (with 1959-level options), no TV, a portable dishwasher, and we live on one income. We have an herb garden, a cabbage patch, and windows that we actually open. Our only concession to the world of 2011 is the Internet. We love it. If only we could get the rest of society to dial it back to 1959 as we have...

Resolved: The American Dream = 1959 + modern medicine and the Internet.

I'll never contribute to society as I could have, and I'll never be able to "give back to society" as I had expected.

Kristen:

"Society" doesn't give a shit about you. "Society" won't visit you in old age or comfort you on your deathbed. I could go on.

What I do know, however, is I've lost 15 years of working life. I'll never get those years back. I'll never "live up to my potential," as my mother used to say.

What, you mean like a "career?" A career means you work your ass off until you get old, then you get eased (or thrown) out the door once your margins aren't as competitive, and then you die and that was your life.

A comment on the sole destiny of the kitchen for women in the old days. Most women still want that. I went to an Ivy League School. Did some grad work after that. When my young niece told my sister she wanted to be a mom with no kids "so she could stay home, not have to work, and not have to take care of kids" every 20-something Ivy League/Grad school female thought my niece was the smartest girl in the world. "She has it all figured out at 6 years old" was the common reply.

But all of them wanted kids. All of them. They knew the true dream was not to work. The biological urge to make babies goes into overdrive in the mid 20s for most woman and overtakes silly dreams of corporate happiness.

Happiness is not found in the workplace for women. I've known many women give up their careers and be excited about it as long as they had even a passable husband. Not great. Just not gay or morbidly obese. Normal woman want the kitchen. Some still want to use their brains some way. But they are perfectly happy to use them to try Alton Brown recipes in the kitchen rather than outdo fat Joe in accounts receivable.

California has a long way to fall before it's worse than those places and people stop coming.

The error is in thinking you can't fall a long ways in a short time. Often it just takes passing a certain crucial demographic tipping point. When America becomes a third-rate country, you'll be able to tell your children, "I never saw it coming!"

"If all people would transform into solid Americans after only a generation or so then I would be for unrestricted immigration - as would every decent person."

No, no, no! This is where so many conservatives and HBDers just don't get it. This country, no matter how high the collective IQ, is a finite place with finite resources, just like anywhere else. I'm sorry that some parts of the world are already unsustainable and/or overpopulated. Why would we want our country to be the same way? Thousands of bright PHDs, whether of WASP or Chinese origin will not come up with sci fi/green tech solutions the problem of exponential growth. That is just another "progressive" myth. This is where so many libertarians are as pie in the sky as the libs.

I like having open spaces, solitude, clean water, access to plenty of food, low pollution. If you want to live in India, please go there.

So help me out here. I ask in earnest. From a distance it looks as if you are much better off than in the 1950's, but if so, why are you unhappy?

You're asking (some of) the right questions. Of course it has been detailed elsewhere that we spent A LOT more money on education, transportation, and housing today. Yes, it is a bigger house. Why are we obsessed with bigger houses?

Consider that two things which have also changed hugely--population density and population diversity. There's reason to believe that human beings--like other animals--begin to degrade once a critical level of density is passed. And Putnam has established that population diversity markedly decreases trust levels. See this.

LOL. They've got an excellent point there, Steve-O: Progress is progress, and life 'aint Furrs Cafeteria. Either you want to live in the past or you want to live in the present you don't get to pick and choose your own hybrid reality!

Well, I fully recognize that Steve and about 95% of his commenters are almost monomaniacally focused on immigration as being the primary culprit in all of America's problems of the last 50 (100? 200? 300?) years.

But I'll still bet that if a vast horde of Mexican illegals had arrived in the Chicago area about 30 years earlier than they eventually did, Steve's in-laws wouldn't have lost their home and their life-savings, and would probably still be living there. After all, Steve's still living in LA, isn't he, probably America's most heavily Hispanic/immigrant large city?...

Some sound logic you got going there.

What's next? Israelis compared to Palestinians to make them look good?

"My wife and I decided years ago that 1959 was a good place to be. We live in a small 1959 house in the inner city, have one car (with 1959-level options), no TV, a portable dishwasher, and we live on one income...Our only concession to the world of 2011 is the Internet. We love it...

Resolved: The American Dream = 1959 + modern medicine and the Internet."

My husband and I live a similar life in a little 1959 ranch in a small town, with one drivable car and on one income. I use our dishwasher as a dishdrainer. No cable but we do have TVs and DVDs players for watching movies (in my case, mainly old b&w). We haven't been to the movies since 2000. I buy mainly OOP HBs.

I not only love living this way, I feel healthier.

I am grateful for medical advances. And I love the Internet (where you can read many old books legally and for free and spend hours perusing maps new and old). Other than that, forget it.

I wouldn't be that hard on Kristen. There have always been women who have sought some greater purpose than the traditional female role, and who have been capable of making a mark. The problem is that the schools put this path before women as their main choice, and that little effort is made to describe its drawbacks as well as its advantages.

It's probably not a coincidence that her husband turned out to be gay. More likely her education and socialization cultivated a taste for this sort of man, without her knowing it. She was then left in that trap, to her own evident misfortune. Finding no content in the role of housewife, she is also now ill-suited for the professional career she left behind. A cautionary tale.

Megan's comment is the mirror image of the technology comments above, and assumes a tradeoff I don't think is quite what she thinks it is. She seems to accept the idea that affordable family formation and safe streets require keeping women mostly out of the workforce and enforcing racial segregation. (To repurpose one of her favorite quotes, I do not think that argument means what she thinks it means.).

We're not going to go back to a world where lots of towns have sunset laws, nor where women can't or won't take professional jobs, nor one where divorce is a rare scandal--the widespread beliefs of the country won't support that stuff anymore. (For good reason.). It would be nearly as hard to roll that stuff back as to go back to typewriters and bloated middle management, forget the internet and containerized shipping, and get rid of big chain stores and go back to locally owned tiny stores in every town.

Framing the issue in terms of going backward in either sense is a mistake. Affordable family formation, good schools, safe streets, and a decent economic future ahead for our kids are goals that can be moved toward without abandoning technological or social progress, I think. We need to be working out how and trying to get there.

"I agree with this statement. Americans of Irish extraction have always been tied to the Democratic Party e.g. urban political machines. While the Irish have historically had a strong distaste for Black Americans, their leaders saw the political advantages of forming an alliance with them and the Jews in opposition to the British/Dutch/German descended power structure of the U.S. which leaned towards the Republican party."

Do you even know any Americans of Irish descent? Those who still vote Democratic mainly do it because of unions/personal benefit, not because of some antiquated resentment towards WASPs....Now there is an "Irish conspiracy"?....you have got to be kidding me. And there are lots of German Catholic democrats up in Wisconsin if you haven't noticed on the news lately. THere is some great stuff to be found in the comments here at iSTeve, but there is also some undeniably wacky stuff.

Here Megan is lamenting her marriage and children, and her lost "productive" years of "contributing to society." As others have noted, because most women today buy into that tripe most divorces are initiated by women, and so too follow all of today's other ills associated with feminism. In the meantime, those 50+ women who never married are now staring at their gray, wrinkled years and their less than stellar careers, and watching friends suffer disease or hardship with no family cushion and no one who gives a damn about their lives.

One of today's self-help columns features a letter from such a woman lamenting her terrible loneliness, although she has a "fulfilling career," friends, hobbies, and travels. She was taught she shouldn't "settle," so she didn't - and as she's watched successive generations of friends eventually settle into relationships/families, she's realized she's "not the most important person in anyone's life, and no amount of self-help cliches" will change that.

Americans of Irish extraction have always been tied to the Democratic Party e.g. urban political machines.

Sure, if by "always" you mean "up until fifty years ago". These days Americans of Irish extraction live in suburbia rather than in urban areas, and they vote Republican. You could look it up.

It is the Italian, Polish, and Slovak descended voters who are in the middle and have been critical to national elections.

No, it is not. Of the different Catholic groups the Irish are the most Republican and the Poles (who actually DO live in urban areas) the least. Italians are somewhere in between. There are not enough Slovaks to make any difference.

It is true that my people the Irish were dumb and violent when they got to America. The best evidence is that the Irish IQ was about 85. That was true for Italians too. So the Irish and Italian neighborhoods were violent, chaotic, and filled with crime - just like modern Black or Hispanic neighborhoods.

There is no evidence that the Irish and Italian immigrants had an IQ of 85. Both of these countries today have average IQ's in the upper 90's.

As for violence, chaos, and crime - that was the norm (compared to modern ideas of normalcy) in most of the US in the late 19th century.

How about if we look a the standard of living in absolute terms? If we look at the typical 1959 house; in sq ft per inhabitant, appliances and entertainment gadgetry, quality of building materials and installations, etc, etc. What about the family car, in terms of technical sophistication, rather than terms of nostalgic appeal?

That's not looking at things in "absolute terms". That's you deciding that you value certain things (power windows, microwave ovens, mp3 players) over other things (low crime rates, social stability, a sense of community).

And that's only the first problem. The second problem is that you are positing a false choice. There's no inherent reason why we can't have the gadgets AND the viable communities.

Thank you all for your thoughts on my questions. Nostalgia for 1950's America is pretty much universal, and I'm not immune to it myself, as proven by the utterly hopeless 1960 Cadillac I put all my money into as a young man.

From a European perspective, when we are nostalgic about old times it's never about the economy. Postwar Europe economic development is pretty much a steady, slow upward curve. Perhaps we therefore have less of a distraction in identifying what it is we long for.

I was born in Finland in 1970. Compared with today, in absolute terms, we were poor. So were most other families around. We were also happy and very secure. Today, our standard of living is almost absurdly much better. Meanwhile, happiness has increased a little, and the feeling of security not much at all.

I think Europeans and Americans appeciate pretty much the same things in a community, but we do have some different ideas on how to get there.

Tino; I am going to give you TWO 'actual' answers; both totally honest and forthright:

"Do you honestly think this speaks well of either the press or Obama?"

No, Tino, I think that pettiness, one-upmanship, and bitter sarcasm are bad, and should always be avoided. A Christian should take the high road at all times, and should one smack him on the cheek, he should simply turn the other cheek to offer that one to be smacked as well.

Well, Tino, a cursory glance at the history of the white house correspondents dinner reveals that it started in 1914, but as late as 2007 during the Bush administration, there was already crticism regarding the increasing polarity of the event, from wikipedia:

"After the 2007 dinner, New York Times columnist Frank Rich implied that the Times will no longer participate in the dinners.[16] Rich said that the event is "a crystallization of the press's failures in the post-9/11 era" because it "illustrates how easily a propaganda-driven White House can enlist the Washington news media in its shows."[16]

So Tino, it is dubious, at best to cite a 10-year time span as "historical precedence", especially when it appears to be untrue. The white house correspondent's dinner is a relatively minor event and why should the president not put his own spin on it, as he has, for example, some say in redesigning the white house decor during his administration?

And now a third, totally free answer for you:

Does Barack Obama appear to be thin skinned on some level? Yes Tino, he does. Vindictive? probably. Angry? Yes. The point however, my good man is this: Past presidents received criticizm for unpopular morals, (Clinton) or policies (Bush I and II).

NO president in my lifetime has received so much criticism for for something that there is absolutely NO EVIDENCE that he ever did, e.g.; be born in a foreign country.

Certainly Barry's RESPONSES are much different than those of his critics, because his CHALLENGES are as well. I don't remember anyone ever demanding to see Bill Clinton's birth certificate even though it is reputed that his father is actually David Rockefeller.

In ridiculing Donald Trump, he's not just being touchy, he is fending off a personal, underhanded, and probably made up attack BY AN ANNOUNCED, REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT IN 2012.

I assume the reference to the American Conservative concerned the "His-Panic" cover story. And while Ron certainly campaigning on a pro-immigration platform running for governor of California, his article explicitly said that we couldn't conclude based on his analysis that immigration is good since there are a number of factors to consider. I don't recall any other cheerleading from AmConMag and think most of the regular writers are restrictionists.

while Ron certainly campaigning on a pro-immigration platform running for governor of California, his article explicitly said that we couldn't conclude based on his analysis that immigration is good since there are a number of factors to consider.

Great. Bur his article was still silly at best and dishonest at worst.

the Irish do seem like they could be an average 93...we don't need any more of them either

I don't know why people keep saying the Irish and Italians assimilated "just fine"...they were both tough meals to digest and consumed plenty of resources in their day...obviously millions of Mexicans are going to be no light lunch

mostly I'd just like to see fewer people in the country, period, but I realize this spells trouble for our Ponzi welfare and economic schemes

Anonymous: There is no evidence that the Irish and Italian immigrants had an IQ of 85. Both of these countries today have average IQ's in the upper 90's.

Sometimes I think I'm the only person in the world who actually *reads* any of the sacred texts of the IQists, such as the books by Richard Lynn, even though they're constantly cited on all the HBD blogsites...

As it happens, if you look in Lynn's definitive IQ & Wealth of Nations book, you'll see that he cites a huge test of Irish schoolchildren which revealed them to have a (fully adjusted) mean IQ of just 87 in the early 1970s (p. 209 of my edition). By a remarkable coincidence, the IQ which Lynn estimates for Mexico is precisely the same figure of 87. And just a year or two ago, Lynn produced quite a bit of chatter in the HBD-blogosphere when he published a paper claiming that the current IQ of Southern Italians was roughly a similar figure. Naturally, the exact same people who endlessly tout Lynn's data when they like what it says also tend to ignore or condemn his data when they don't.

Now IQ tests obviously weren't given when the Irish and Italians arrived here as immigrants in the 19th Century. But if Ireland Irish and Southern Italians today have (or in the very recent past have had) testable IQs of 85-90, it seems pretty likely that their totally impoverished and very poorly-educated immigrant co-ethnics of a hundred years ago would have had testable IQs which were no higher, and quite possibly a good deal lower.

German Catholics are more conservative, who cares about your "lots of" anecdotal observation, the midwestern states with the highest German Catholic concentrations are far more conservative than the highly nukable Scandinavian infestations in Minnesota and Wisconsin (don't even get me started)

btw yes Irish Catholics are a hugely Democratic ethnic group, to the point that when people think Catholic they think Irish Catholic because that is pretty much all you see on TV (with some wops thrown in)...you could be forgiven, based on the media alone, for thinking Irish Catholics were the only variety of Catholic that made it ashore (unless like me you're German Catholic and know the difference)

The General Social Survey asked respondents if they think about social and political issues as Americans or as members of an ethnic group. The obvious choice is blacks, right? Well yeah, there's no news there. Listed below are the percent who answered ethnic group:

Obviously the birthed issue and the rumor that Obama is a Muslim persist since a lot of people do not considering Obama a "real" American, because of his race, and because his father was a foreigner. But hostile conspiracies about Presidents are not unique to Obama. Bush was accused of having knowledge about 9/11, something a sizable share of the population believed.

Conspiracies about Clinton were also common.

You and Obama should recognize race plays two roles here. Yes, it caused birthism, but it also led to a lot of good-will towards Obama which helped get him the nomination and the presidency.

I blame the press for double standards, for fawning over a leftist president while hostile to Republicans. I don't necessarily blame the President for taking political advantage of the event, although I think he is not doing himself a favor.

If Obama instead went up there and did ten minutes of honestly self-deprecating humor (not just the "my main flay is that work too hard" fake kind), he would regains some of his popularity.

Like with many things around here, Isteve descriptions such as "like" and "dislike" are highly mutable. For instance:

Q- "are the "Are the Jews White?"

A- Yes when one is beaten up by a black guy.

A- No when votes Democratic makes a large profit off white people.

Quite obviously both answers are true. That brings us to the second part of your querry: "I honestly have no idea and can't guess why he would be."

He is "white" and his opponent is "black" therefore he is popular with Isteve readers.

"But hostile conspiracies about Presidents are not unique to Obama."

There have been "conspiracies" about every president that goes back to Washington, but none of them persisted on a daily basis which such a large portion of the opposition, and the public at large, that they influenced the president to actually change his daily routine.

In terms of 9-11, I've read a few books and untold articles on the issue. My research has led me to one of two conclusions:

1) Bush did know in advance2) He is so stupid, they were able to hide a 2,000 elephant in his bedroom.

The evidence is so pervasive, it is almost hard to make any other argument.

For another example, there is a lot of rumbling, (and a great book written by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard) that states that when governor of AK, Bill Clinton was responsible for facilitating the crack cocaine trade of the SW United States through Mena Airport:

Now I did not say, "it happened on his watch", I said RESPONSIBLE, and there is at least as much evidence that this is true (and probably a great deal more) than there is that Barry was born in Africa.

"Now I did not say, "it happened on his watch", I said RESPONSIBLE, and there is at least as much evidence that this is true (and probably a great deal more) than there is that Barry was born in Africa."

hey, I believe you. Clinton and Clinton were bad news and corrupt. However, C&C did both meet the basic criteria for holding the office. Most of the presidents in this century have been closer to criminals than to anything admirable. However, that does not change the basic rules for these criminals to run for office.I also have heard testimony that Barry O. did lines in the back of limousines with other men, but that's his business. Some people are trying to figure out why he has several social security numbers, mostly got in Connecticut where he never lived. But that's his business, right? Except that it's not. As Webster Tarpley points out, if he wants his finger on the nuclear button, if he wants the power to annihilate us all, he has no right to hide anything from anybody. They give more stringent psychological critera to customs clerks than they give to these POTUSs.

Most politicians at this level are filthy and blackmailable. That's why they are where they are. Only someone who could not be blackmailed should be in that office.However, with Barry O. we have a person who possibly (probably? certainly?) didn't qualify at the basic level. He should have been one criminal we wouldn't have to look at for 4 years, him and "my people" Atty. Gen. Holder, wagging their fingers, telling us how racist we all are. wft are they doing in the whitey institutions like the WH and the DOJ? They clearly don't want to "serve" the people they work for. Maybe there are black politicians that could help bring a better day; miracles happen; but it ain't this crowd.

We know Mrs. M.O. lost her law licence and was forbidden to practice law since the early 90s, for reasons kept quiet, and had something to do with an illegal immigration scam. The "First Lady" loses her law license for improprieties of an extremely serious nature, and all we hear about are her goofy food issues? Yet B.O.'s handlers are perhaps even more guilty. That Pelosi creature who deliberately excised the phrase "natural born citizen" from the certification papers sent to the state Democratic National Committees for signing, certainly had her reasons and knew what she was doing. If Barry O. goes, all his enablers should do time. I think they know that, so maybe they'll all helicopter out of D.C. like they're running from a tsunami, and set up shop in Kenya. Or maybe Hawaii.

I feel sorry for Megan McArdle because I think she is the victim of bad advice.

She is extremely tall, which would make it difficult to find a husband.

Rather than working extra hard to find a husband when young, she seems to have expended considerable energy on political activities instead, in the name of causes which she doesn't even believe in any more.

Girls should really focus on getting married when they are in their late teens and early 20s and then work on political activities (if they wish) when they are in their 30s, rather than the other way around.

And girls really don't have much margin for error if they are masculinized in some way (that is very tall or witty or highly educated or highly intelligent). This is because they will want a man who is at least what they are in those respects.

And of course, it is dangerous to sleep with a man before you are married, and even more dangerous to live with a man. These are risks that only beautiful, highly desirable women can safely undertake.

"I also have heard testimony that Barry O. did lines in the back of limousines with other men,"

I've heard that George Bush Sr. has the ability to turn into a winged, 7ft lizard whenever he wants as well. As yes, I'm saying that literally.

"Some people are trying to figure out why he has several social security numbers"

Do you know he has several social security numbers, or did you read it on someone's blog?

"Most politicians at this level are filthy and blackmailable."

No, not most, all. You do not become POTUS unless the powers that be are secure that they own you. There have been 3 presidents in the last 50 years who were not totally owned by the establishment (only 90%)

KennedyNixonReagan

ShotDisgracedShot

"However, with Barry O. we have a person who possibly (probably? certainly?) didn't qualify at the basic level."

He has shown you a birth certificate. Do you know what the official presidential vetting system is? I don't and I've done lots of research.

"The "First Lady" loses her law license for improprieties of an extremely serious nature, and all we hear about are her goofy food issues?"

And what, exactly has B.O done to convince you of this?

You have looked into Hillary Clinton's background, right?

The bottom line, my friend, is this: You know absolutely nothing about the president of the US. The only thing you know is what you are told. It's a simple as that. The only difference between BO and any other president of my lifetime is that where before you were told lies, now you were told nothing.

In real life, I knew of a woman who'd married a gay man. She was a nerd. Her son, who also turned out to be gay, was also a nerd and a Randian to boot.

On the internet, there is nerd girl and major weirdo Jacqueline Passey. She actually ran for office as a libertarian. Anyway, she was married to a gay man.

---

So, no Sword, it's unlikely that a gay man was persuaded to go straight by Kristen's looks.

And no, Udolpho, it's unlikely that Kristen's advanced education led her to prefer gay traits in a husband.

It's likely that Kristen is very nerdy. Maybe even Randian/libertarian. And that she didn't have the social acumen to figure out that her husband was homosexual, and that she didn't have the qualities required to win a good heterosexual man.

Oh come on with this Irish & Italian IQ 85 stuff. One IQ study I saw also gave an 85 to Swedish immigrants. These people came from a rural, unlettered background for the most part, and were in a strange land to boot. Irish and Italians (and Swedes) now form a major part of the white population and do not drag down the IQ average. People who are exposed to literacy and urban environments from an early age get their mental processes speeded up. The IQ seems to increase at least half to as much as whole standard deviation. The proof of IQ is its consistency across continents, as long as the people being tested are in literate societies. The averages for the Euro immigrants is about what would be expected for a rural population; their descendants are in the 100 average range. It is fully congruent with the black African average being a standard deviation (at least) lower. Rural blacks, 65-70; urbanized, 80-85 average.

"However, C&C did both meet the basic criteria for holding the office."

I looked for those bylaws and could not find them."5/2/11 4:10 PM"

Mr. Truth, I refer you to Phil Berg's Obamacrimes.com. People like you are not going to believe anything about the Big O, except what you want to believe.At this point the long-form birth certificate the rest of America has to show to go anywhere or get hired, is a moot point because POTUS has released a document so obviously fraudulent, he's a criminal just on that.

"Mr. Truth,I refer you to Phil Berg's Obamacrimes.com.People like you are not going to believe anything about the Big O, except what you want to believe."

Mr. Delight

I wrote you an long response earlier, but there was a glitch as I delivered, so here's the short version.

I've made this clear approximately 1,322,987 times on this blog; here goes again:

I am willing to belive anything about Mr. Obama. I do not 'like' him, 'respect' him, or 'admire' him. He is a criminal both here and abroad. Noting more nothing less.

Now one of the problems with this board is that everyone claims to have a 170+ IQ...but no one can read!

(Here's the important part; pay attention please) Obama is a criminal for one, and only one reason: Because one could not be the POTUS without being a criminal. Every president in my lifetime has been a criminal, it's as simple as that. (Now here's where you come in, Son.)

As I believe I stated earlier, Slick Willie, is reputed to have been the cocaine kingpin of the southern US. The Bush Cabal is unquestionably, the biggest crime family in the history of this nation (do your research)they've started two wars, for the obvious reason of making relatives rich!

AND YOU'RE WORRYING ABOUT A FUCKING BIRTH CERTIFICATE?!?!?!?

Now I know these things come as a surprise to you because the globalists didn't slap you in the face with the information. Overtly (as in ObamaLove) or Covertly (as in the Birther controversy), for people like you this is necessary to find anything out.

Now you will believe that a man who has release not one, but TWO birth certificates, and has a birth announcement in a local newspaper FOUR DAYS AFTER HE IS BORN, had a mother who at 17 years old would take a series of flights, well over 24 hours in 1950's era prop planes to Kenya and back to give birth.

OK then.

You will not, on the other hand, investigate anything involving our cowardly, criminal, and reprehensible "founding fathers" until this one; Why, because you are a racist...and more importantly, a fool!

You see, Mr. Delight, being a racist really isn't much of a crime in my book. If that's what makes you happy, I say, have at it, Son. Be the best racist you can be. I will still respect you, if you learn to use your God-damned brain! At this point in time, you are a sheep, a shill and an ignoramus. That is a respectable description of people who cannot think logically, when the evidence is right in front of their eyes.

Let me state, for the record, once again, my opinions on the president:

I COULD GIVE TWO FUCKS ABOUT BARRY, MICHELLE, OR ANY OTHER BLACK ORGANIZED CRIMINAL. If they got locked up tomorrow, I would go drink a 6-pack. But what separates me from you is that I can see that what YOUR handlers are doing now, is no different from what they did in 2000, 1992, 19888 or any other election year since I've been alive. I can see that, my friend, and all you can see is a N- who "has the authority to tell you what to do", and you don't like it!

Do you really, truly believe, the CIA could not make a passable birth certificate if they so chose?

Or maybe, just maybe, they are suckering people on the internet (Hint: YOU) to keep this silly controversy alive for some reason. Now, I could tell you why, but you start with a clean slate and your life as a logical thinker begins... right...NOW.

"Parents don't need to chauffeur their kids that much to keep them competitive."

Maybe it's not really for their kids but for their own prestige in the eyes of their peers. It's like people who spend lots of money for pet grooming do it not really for the pets--who don't give a crap about that stuff--but to show off to their peers that they are fancy people who 'go for the best'. So, it's really a case of keeping up with the boboneses(boho-bourgeoisie)than trying to make Einsteins of one's own kids.

Here's the Google Wallet FAQ. From it: "You will need to have (or sign up for) Google Wallet to send or receive money. If you have ever purchased anything on Google Play, then you most likely already have a Google Wallet. If you do not yet have a Google Wallet, don’t worry, the process is simple: go to wallet.google.com and follow the steps." You probably already have a Google ID and password, which Google Wallet uses, so signing up Wallet is pretty painless.

You can put money into your Google Wallet Balance from your bank account and send it with no service fee.

Google Wallet works from both a website and a smartphone app (Android and iPhone -- the Google Wallet app is currently available only in the U.S., but the Google Wallet website can be used in 160 countries).

Or, once you sign up with Google Wallet, you can simply send money via credit card, bank transfer, or Wallet Balance as an attachment from Google's free Gmail email service. Here'show to do it.

(Non-tax deductible.)

Fourth: if you have a Wells Fargo bank account, you can transfer money to me (with no fees) via Wells Fargo SurePay. Just tell WF SurePay to send the money to my ancient AOL email address steveslrATaol.com -- replace the AT with the usual @). (Non-tax deductible.)

Fifth: if you have a Chase bank account (or, theoretically,other bank accounts), you can transfer money to me (with no fees) via Chase QuickPay (FAQ). Just tell Chase QuickPay to send the money to my ancient AOL email address (steveslrATaol.com -- replace the AT with the usual @). If Chase asks for the name on my account, it's Steven Sailer with an n at the end of Steven. (Non-tax deductible.)

My Book:

"Steve Sailer gives us the real Barack Obama, who turns out to be very, very different - and much more interesting - than the bland healer/uniter image stitched together out of whole cloth this past six years by Obama's packager, David Axelrod. Making heavy use of Obama's own writings, which he admires for their literary artistry, Sailer gives the deepest insights I have yet seen into Obama's lifelong obsession with 'race and inheritance,' and rounds off his brilliant character portrait with speculations on how Obama's personality might play out in the Presidency." - John Derbyshire Author, "Prime Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics" Click on the image above to buy my book, a reader's guide to the new President's autobiography.